I hate the fact that as a Mage all I get is a heal, which I will never use. Not in raiding anyway.

I use to think this way when I raided as moonkin. All I used is dps abilities and if had to use a utility type ability...oh let me get it out of my spell book.

Then i got into feral pvp, and I felt like I was using 95% of my abilities. I couldnt believe how much fun pvp was.
I applied this same versatile playstyle into random dungeons. throwing off heals, off tanking, cc'ing when needed. To me, this was fun.

The whole mindset back then for me was dps increase, dps increase, dps increase. It's like the only point of raiding was to get better gear so we could increase our dps. That turned me off to raiding.

A substantial chunk of them have situational uses, and situationally useful things is more or less the name of the game in this case. I see you've run through them already, but let's make a quick run through again, noting also potential uses for the person receiving Symbiosis and specific fights for them:

Rogue - I'm under the impression this is a survival increase for unavoidable AoE. Am I wrong? I don't know of any great uses for a Rogue having taunt.

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Wait, you've never had a time where you thought, "I wish I could heal myself"? I know I've thought that on every single one of my DPS characters at some point. There are some fights where there's specific times that there's nothing better to do, even.

A rogue with taunt, bearform stats and evasion up ? i can think of a number of situations where that might be handy ^^

A rogue with taunt, bearform stats and evasion up ? i can think of a number of situations where that might be handy ^^

Seriously though, what are the chances a rogue will be the one receiving the Symbiosis swap for this event to occur? I use your statement as an example but this is true for a LOT of the combinations offered by Blizz. In the end I think this spell is so situationally restricted, it will be more hassle or defaulted vs being open choice by the druid.

Anyone that claims Symbi is useless in PvE has absolutely no idea what they are talking about. If Symbi only worked on Shadow Priests and it still gave them Tranq it would still be amazing. The fact that you can pick and choose what you want just makes it that much more broken.

Anyone that claims Symbi is useless in PvE has absolutely no idea what they are talking about. If Symbi only worked on Shadow Priests and it still gave them Tranq it would still be amazing. The fact that you can pick and choose what you want just makes it that much more broken.

Then explain how I should use it, cause I cant think of a way that isn't a waste of a global cool-down compared to a native ability I could use instead.

It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shakes, the shakes become a warning.

Does Symbiosis still have the distance restriction? This will be annoying while I'm leveling, questing, and finishing dailies. Every other class gets a new lvl 87 ability they can use anytime, but we have to go hunt someone down to use our ability for an hour, Genius!

Distance means : Same continent, instance or anything else that is not separated by a loading screen. They also made it so you can't release before boss fight ends, so you won't lose it from stupid people.

If Symbi only worked on Shadow Priests and it still gave them Tranq it would still be amazing. The fact that you can pick and choose what you want just makes it that much more broken.

So you're saying that our level 87 ability is awesome because we can give SOMEONE ELSE something remotely useful without getting anything worth mentioning in return. Sounds like an awesome ability to me... I mean we druids are selfless creatures, aren't we? /sarcasm

Last edited by zen0x; 2012-09-18 at 04:18 PM.

"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing." "But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED." "Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

I believe that symbiosis is an ability that requires a lot of imagination and knowledge of the encounter. Besides, it depends on the player what kind of skill he will choose to use. Not to mention that you can do awesome things in PvP with it.

Bone Shield: This is for when a huge hit is incoming, like an impale, and you have to stack cds to live through it. Taking 10% off a hit designed to take more than 100% of your unmitigated life is not boring.

Ice Trap: This makes it easier to control adds and kite. With stuff like this in the repertoire, and Faerie Swarm, and Ursol's Vortex and Feline Swiftness we don't need to ask someone else to change specs and manage adds, we can do it ourselves just as well. I've been kiting the adds which need kiting in raids this entire expansion anyway, because frankly I'm better at it than the rest of the team and we don't have any DKs in any case.

Frost Armor: See Ice Trap. Potentially better in some situations, since it has no cooldown.

Elusive Brew: No tank worth his spot sniffs at 10% dodge for 8 seconds every minute, especially when you can stack it on top of Savage Defense.

Consecration: Kiting applications. Extra aoe damage. As well, you can drop it in a spot where you know adds (or a boss) are going to pop out and then attend to other things somewhere else.

Fear Ward: There are some raid fights which fear you. There are some 5 man fights that fear. They aren't all that common, but when they pop up there's something in the toolkit to deal with it. I for one have dearly missed the fear break we got from Berserk on more than one occasion.

Feint: Nine times out of ten when you encounter big nasty aoe in a raid, you're not going to be able to dodge it. In those situations, this isn't a waste of rage. Savage Defense is. And it's proactive where FR is reactive. In fights where these things happen more than once a minute, I'd take this over Bone Shield.

Lightning Shield: You got me here. Minor dps increase, I guess.

Life Tap: You can use this before a pull. You can also use it to get ready for a tank swap, or for the boss to come down after an air phase, or any other time when you go from taking a little damage to taking a lot of it. Life Tap used sparingly can pad that out.

Spell Reflection: If and when there does wind up being a fight where you can repel a spell in either a raid or a challenge mode, this is hands down the best way to block it.

I can see myself changing this buff out before every boss, heck, before every progression attempt, trying to work out the best way I can help the team get through a trouble phase. The spells are all niche applications and don't apply to every fight, but when they do apply, they're nice. They're very nice.

The only reason people can call things like this useless is because low-end PvE is so easy that you can succeed with only 10% of your spellbook even on an actionbar. They're the same people who would also consider barkskin or soothe PvP-only spells.

The only reason people can call things like this useless is because low-end PvE is so easy that you can succeed with only 10% of your spellbook even on an actionbar. They're the same people who would also consider barkskin or soothe PvP-only spells.

Exactly

Here's an example i did last night: I was doing 25m ICC, on lady deathwhisper. I happend to proc predators swiftness at the same time when one of my team mates was getting mind controlled. Instead of letting him wreck mayhem on my team mates, I insta cycloned him. Tell me thats not useful

I agree that for bears it's kind of lackluster, but 10% dr every minute while giving the other tank an extra mini-CD is not useless. It's not like you're gonna get another barkskin, and this way you'll get something that's useful in every fight.

As for cat, jesus christ would I love to have had Symbiosis during Cataclysm in 10-man. The strategies my guild would be able to pull off would be even more crazy then the ones we already came up with.

Whatever people say, the only thing that remains is to wait to test Symbiosis live. Remember that PvE is not only about raiding. Scenarios and Challenge Modes may prove that it's a necessary ability to have in some cases.

Symbiosis has the potential to be fun and add a unique level of complexity to the game HOWEVER it is too restrictive when it actually counts.

1) Limited by your spec
2) Limited by group/raid size (a 10 man raid will only give 9/10 class options assuming your raid doesn't have multiple druids)
3) Limited by group composition
(a Player cannot receive SYM twice so what if you and another druid both want to use it on the only shaman in the raid?)
4) Limited by how Raid Leader thinks it will best benefit the raid since you are not the only one benefitting from the spell.

So yeah, you can go hog wild in LFR but when things get serious I do not think there will be as much choice as everyone is anticipating.

The major concern with Symbiosis in PvE is that it will only be used to grant other specs an ability. You'll have to use it to give the tank a cooldown, so it doesn't actually provide much utility to the druid who cast it.

While symbio was a really cool idea in theory, in practice I'd rather have had a new ability, rather than a load of rehashes of other classes spells.

I'd also rather have had an ability that benefits the Druid only, rather than something we're going to be encoraged into putting onto certain classes/specs, regardless of what spell we obtain.

There's also the joyful 'oh you want x symbio abilities but you don't have a y class/spec in your 10-man group, well screw you, you're not getting it' thing.

On top of that for tanking it just feels so dull... you're basically going to be forced to put it on a Monk/DK/Rogue for a piddly DR cooldown that won't be fun or interesting to use - again assuming you actually have any of those classes in your 10-man group, otherwise it won't matter who you dump it on unless it's a very gimmicky fight.

Originally I thought it was cool but now it's just like... meh. I dunno if it's anything to do with it being 'bad', so much as it being uninteresting for me.